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Patterns of analgesic prescribing in a South African primary care setting
Author(s) -
Truter I.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of clinical pharmacy and therapeutics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.622
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1365-2710
pISSN - 0269-4727
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2710.1997.96175961.x
Subject(s) - analgesic , primary care , medicine , family medicine , anesthesia
The primary aim of this study was to assess patterns of prescribing of analgesic medications in a primary care setting in South Africa. Medication records of 47 103 patients for the year 1995 were retrospectively reviewed. Analgesic agents represented 12·3% of the total number and 14·2% of the total cost of all the products prescribed. Analgesic products were prescribed to nearly three times as many females as males. Most analgesic prescriptions were for non‐opioid analgesics (93·8%). More than half (56·8%) of all the prescriptions for analgesics were available without a prescription from a medical practitioner. Analgesic prescription diminished as age increased. The high prescribing rate of analgesics to children younger than 10 years was a cause for concern. Furthermore, meprobamate‐containing analgesics accounted for 12·2% of central nervous system drugs and 28·1% of the non‐opioid analgesics that were prescribed. This finding was also a cause for concern due to the dependence‐producing properties of meprobamate. It was concluded that the pharmacist has an important role to fulfil in the counselling of patients with respect to the use of analgesic products.